


Manager

by Cloverthirteen



Series: Circus bug ficlets [3]
Category: A Bug's Life (1998)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, could just be rosie's relationship with the troupe, she's just everyone's mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23495815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloverthirteen/pseuds/Cloverthirteen
Summary: Manager, noun. “A person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization, or a person who controls the activities, business dealings, and other aspects of the career of an entertainer, athlete, group of musicians, etc.”
Relationships: Rosie & Dim
Series: Circus bug ficlets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1716649
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Manager

P.T. Flea was the manager of the circus. And that was technically true.

The definition of “manager” is given as “A person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization, or a person who controls the activities, business dealings, and other aspects of the career of an entertainer, athlete, group of musicians, etc.” by the shredded old pages of a Merriam-Webster dictionary. The scraps, collected by insects of generations past, were filed away in a library of hundreds, thousands of alphabetized words, torn from the huge human-sized books that were so cumbersome for insects to use. The library, in turn, was connected to an institute for the purpose of teaching others to read, write, and define words. Including this particular one.

Rosie knew the definition well.

She had taught it, along with hundreds and thousands of other words, to Dim, after learning that no one else had taken time to do so. When Rosie, fresh out of college, met him by chance, as the resident of a small town that didn’t see him as fit to live in anything more than a broken plastic cup, she knew she had met someone meaningful. The rest of the town just didn’t know how to judge an insect by their shell, Rosie had decided. He may not have been very bright, but he was certainly one of the most kindhearted bugs that Rosie had met.

As of the present, Dim still couldn’t write--some insects just didn’t have the luxury of opposable thumbs--but he could read, much better than he could when he had first met Rosie, at any rate. He still didn’t talk much, but at least more than he used to. Joining the circus and gaining several new friends helped him somewhat in that respect.

Rosie knew that the chances of Dim becoming entirely “normal” was just about nonexistent. With no one in his life to really be patient or care about him until he became an adult, his mental growth was probably stunted more than it would have been otherwise. Still, Rosie had dismissed the idea of “normal” long ago. Pretty much all of her closest friends wouldn’t be among what society would call “normal” anyway. The other members of the circus were, after all, some of the best friends Rosie had ever had.

Not to mention some of the friends most in need of help--Rosie felt lucky that her own life had been so simple and devoid of major tribulations. But when two of the performers were school dropouts, several were no longer in contact with their own families, two had been adopted directly into the circus from who knows where by the manager, and one was otherwise a total outcast, it was hard to feel like the normal one.

She knew that she was seen as that by her friends, though.

Hardly a day went by that one of the other members of the circus didn’t come to her for help with, well, just about anything. Sometimes it would be Manny wondering if his “spiritual energy” was aligned well enough to successfully pull off a magic trick. A few times an anxiety-ridden Slim would approach her in need of someone to talk to. Or Dim would just need someone to raise his spirits just before a performance.

For him, no one else could do that as well as Rosie could.

She wasn’t the oldest member of the troupe--even Dim was technically older than her by a couple of seasons--but she got the feeling that pretty much everyone else viewed her as a surrogate mother of sorts. Given how many of her friends lacked any significant parental figure otherwise, she couldn't help but to fill that gap.

You couldn’t say the same about P.T. Flea.

“Manage” was another word that Rosie knew. It has several different definitions, one common one being “to succeed in surviving or in attaining one's aims, especially against heavy odds; cope.”

And Rosie felt that she helped everyone else fit that definition quite well.


End file.
